I grew up in Holmlia, a suburb of Oslo. Holmlia is right next to the beach surrounded by nature. Its inhabitants are from all corners of the world.
I had a happy childhood but discovered throughout mye teens after moving into the inner city that prejudices existed towards us from Holmlia. In particular if you had a different ethnic background.
The years passed and news coverage exposed that some young men were getting involved in crime related episodes. The statistics were also telling a story of high school drop outs, unemployment, and higher density with lowe income families in Holmlia.
Having been away from my safe haven for a decade a slowly started to worry that maybe Holmlia hade become more troubled. I decided to go back and portray the young males in their everyday. And explore wether my home had changed.
I found young men that were fully aware of the stigma from the media and thus highly supporting and caring for each other, often using the therm “bror” or brother between themselves. As a sign of trust. I also rediscovered a the nature and stillness that I had forgotten I grew up in.
Just as we had scarce resources growing up these young males also had bigger than large dreams and were not willing to let the media portrayal define them.
This project has received financial support from the Fritt Ord Foundation and Kunstsentrene I Norge.
This long term project is about the inhabitants of a public housing area of Oslo in the area of Torshov. Once planned out, designed and built to house a proud working class in the early 1930’s. As time passed Norway found a new economic future in the petrol industry. Several Norwegians took a class journey into the middle class. This as other similar neighbourhoods in central Oslo, started accomodating the ones struggling with different social issues.. Today, it has a mix of poor families, elderly who remained and remember the prouder days of the working class and the ones struggling with various psychological issues and substance abuses.
The small city of Chichigalpa in Nicaragua is known for its rum that derives from the many sugar cane fields. Around 2014-2015 reports starting coming that an uncommon high number of young men where being affected by chronic kidney disease (CKDu). Many of the workers thought at the time that it had somthing to do chemicals used in the fields or contaminated water, but researchers have not yet managed that was the main cause that so many where getting the potentially lethal disease. Reports have in later years shown that similar cases of CKDu is found in other parts of the world, such as in India. The common denominator seems to be that most people affected are poor in hard working conditions living in countries with high degree of heat.
A collaboration with the NGO Unge funksjonshemmede. Young people with disabilities have are tired of not being seen as complete individuals who also have a sexuality.
“Øyenhøyde” means at same eye level in Norwegian. These are meetings with people living in Torshov, Oslo. People that just wanted to be seen next to a white backdrop, deleting all context.
With the rise of other services such as Über and Ola the iconic ambassador taxis of Kolkata are struggling. My visit to this city in India would never had been the same with out the yellow shades that lurk in every corner..
